Monday, 17 October 2011

English Ethnic Dress (1)

This is English Fancy Dress rather than ethnic dress but it is based on real clothes. It is the coming thing for the age of austerity, combining craft and practicality. The male dress is interesting because it allows a display of individuality we haven't seen for many years.

Elements: boots, cord or plain trousers tied at the knee with twine. There's a terrible fear in all English male dress of attacks via the knees: adders, eels, mice, the devil, ferrets (never sure if the string is to keep them out or in) so trousers have to be bound there. Straw looks good; string if not. Not that horrible bright pink plastic twine - the green or brown hairy hemp is fine.

Shirts are of small checks, preferably smudgy ones where the colours are barely differentiated. Bright, high-contrast checks are not the thing. Neckerchief is optional but very useful so most men will have them. You cannot really beat the cotton, red and white spotted neckerchief and they are so useful that there should be spare ones in the pockets of the capacious jacket.

The jacket is not tailored in the sense of fitting. It's tailored in the sense that it might fit somebody and will come and find that person. It will be made of good wool of the tweedy variety and here the customizing comes in. Strips of fabric and maybe feathers are lightly sewn on in rows to create padded contours and crests which emphasize movement and protect the jacket if you have to shove something with your shoulder, perhaps a car or a gate. It isn't necessary to cover the entire jacket although some people like to. Pads can be replaced if they get oily.

The hat is either a tweedy trilby or some favour canvas and leather versions of stockman hats. The trilby is neat, can easily be re-dressed with new feathers and blends in. The overall look should be owlish, not like a peacock. A flat hat, if worn, should not get over-large or it looks like it escaped from Top Of The Pops in 1973.

Accessories are whatever you think best in your pockets, plus a broom. This is not so much for sweeping as beating time like the tap dancers in Stomp do.

The Lincolnshire Poacher look is practical without being reminiscent of hospital scrubs or pyjamas, and suggests one has been up since sunrise conducting delicate business which one is not at liberty to discuss.

I was about to begin an investigation in to Morris dancers, Captain, but I think they've just gone in to hibernation. I don't know if there is the equivalent of the cuckoo with them: "Dear Sir, I distinctly heard bells this morning, 21st February. Yours, etc"

This is absolutely true that the English know each other, Anon, but they have long been subsumed in to the British identity.

That identity was the strongest flask ever fashioned to hold the combined identities of the United Kingdom together in solution. It was very successful. That flask has been fractured, and deliberately. A pity, but I didn't do it. Now the constituent identities are flowing out.

Aha! So there should be a bag of fabric pulled above the knee in the same way that some people use arm-bands to make a bag of fabric above the elbow so that shirts don't pull tight over the shoulder and around the arm-hole seams and tear along the stitches.

Funnily enough, Kevin, I've made some low-level approaches about the uniform. I'm particularly annoyed about it in high-profile places such as 10 Downing Street and Westminster. It's true they might need a vest under the tunic and armed-to-the-teeth officers all round them but the key officer in the public eye is doing a PR job as much as anything.

They should look confident and well-dressed, not bundled-up like a El Presidente's guard in a banana republic. If the police are worried about a risk to one of their members we should just hire an actor to stand there. Actors are always saying they like taking risks.

However, nowhere more than here should Anon's maxim apply: "no need for oaths, fanfare nor lights".

There was a time when a bloke in a navy suit with shiny buttons was sufficient to signify "the state stands behind me, and as it is a just state neither you nor I need be enemies, unless you choose to attack property or persons".

Dear WOAR, thank you so much for this! I look forward to the exegesis on the female dress, which I feel sure shall prove very useful to me on those days at (international) school when everybody is compelled to come in wearing their national costume.